The garbled plot is established via cheesy exposition, with anti-hero Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) inexplicably traveling to Europe to escape the evil force inside him that causes him to transform into a skulled psychopath with his head on fire. No reasons are given for the aging superhero's extended vacation - perhaps the more temperate climes allow cooler heads to prevail. The patchwork plot has him run into the single mom (Violanto Placido) who has quite literally raised a Satan spawn of a kid, Danny (Fergus Riordan). Blaze must now protect Danny from unimpressive baddy Roarke (Ciaran Hinds) to prevent the devil from taking over his body and walking on Earth.
It's not often that writing a movie review feels like rendering a public service, but in this case, we feel like superheroes saving humanity from evil when we state this warning: do no watch this movie. Ghost Rider II features a plot that feels disjointed despite being formulaic, the hammiest acting yet by Cage, and action sequences that are so lethargic they feel like watching your grandmother work out on the Stairmaster. To add insult to injury, directing duo Mark Nevaldine and Brian Taylor indulge in herky-jerky camerawork that is nowhere near slick, and borders on the indulgent.
To keep leveling critique against the movie would be just plain cruel, so we'll just pull the plug on this review by saying that the movie is unwatchable. To those masochistic enough to try, we'd like to quote you an apt line from Dante's Purgatory: 'abandon hope all ye who enter'.
Summary: If the equivalent of high-octane action flick were a Harley-Davidson, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance has the horse power of a toddler-propelled tricycle.
Rating:0.5/5 Raphael Lim
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is now sputtering in cinemas
